PERFORMANCE

The pre-title action sequence from the second James Bond film, From Russia With Love, has a Bond stand-in trying to evade an assassin from SPECTRE in a dark garden at night, which is a tough test for black-level and shadow-detail capability. The LaserVue TV was able to show exceptionally fine shadow gradations in both the garden hedges and Bond's suit, although the deepest black the set delivered was really more of a very dark gray. At the other end of the spectrum, the bright sunshine when Klebb (Lotte Lenya) goes to see Grant (Robert Shaw) for the first time demonstrated the set's ability to deliver punchy highlights free of any "blooming." Colors with the Standard setting selected looked natural - something that could readily be seen in the green grass of the training center, and in Klebb's skin tones.

Few movies have ever used as wild a range of colors as Speed Racer, a live-action feature that the Wachowski brothers worked to make look as much like a cartoon as possible. The Brilliant setting's wide color palette made watching this Blu-ray Disc a real demonstration of what the LaserVue TV could deliver. From the intensely saturated yellow of Young Speed's jacket and the lipstick red seats in Rex's car to the deep azure of the sky, most of us have never seen colors like these on a TV. And while the ultra-vivid version was fun for a while, I found the slightly tamer-looking Bright setting easier to take.

Standard-def programs on cable didn't fare too well on the L65-A90, with both CNN and the Disney Channel looking particularly soft. To be fair, SD-format TV rarely stands up well to close scrutiny on such a large screen.

BOTTOM LINE

Mitsubishi's LaserVue technology gives the L65-A90 capabilities that have never been seen before in a TV. The tricky part is going to be finding a way to use those capabilities without significantly altering the original color balance of movies and other programs viewed on the set. But Mitsubishi has obviously considered this potential issue, since it also lets you select more standard settings for the TV. Even without its expanded color range, the L65-A90 remains an impressive TV, if a rather expensive one.